11
Raven reined back to a walk. “We gave that old boy a fright.”
“Probably figures we’re bandits. We look it. You going to kill these horses today? Or can we string them along for a while?”
Raven grunted. “You’re right, Case. No sense getting in so big a hurry we end up taking twice as long because we have to walk most of the way. Funny. That old boy reminded me of that wizard Bomanz that got eaten by the Barrowland dragon.”
“All them old-timers look the same to me.”
“Could be. Hold up.” He studied the crossroads. I tried to spot the old man in the copse. I was sure he was watching us.
“Well?” I asked.
“They split up like they said they would.”
Don’t ask me how he knew. He knew. Unless he was just faking it. I’ve seen him do that.
“Darling went east. Croaker kept heading south.”
I’d play his game. “How do you figure?”
“She was with him.” He rubbed his hip. “She would be headed for the Tower.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Big deal. “Which way are we headed? Whichever, we got to rest soon.”
“Yes. Soon. For the horses.”
“Sure.” I kept my face blank. Inside I was wishing I had balls enough to yell at him that he didn’t have to go on being the iron man for me. He didn’t have to prove anything to me but that he could stop sucking wine by the gallon and could stop feeling sorry for himself. He wanted to show me how much guts he had, let him show me he had the kind it took to go find his kids and make up with them.
He didn’t have to prove anything to that old man over there in the trees, did he?
I wished he would go ahead and announce the decision I knew he was going to make. I was getting uncomfortable, knowing I was being watched. “Come on. Which way?”
He responded by spurring his mount down the south road.
What the hell was this? I even started to turn east before I realized what he’d done.
I caught up. “Why south?”
Kind of hitting it sideways, he told me, “Croaker was always an understanding kind of guy. And forgiving.”
The son of a bitch was crazy.
Or maybe he’d suddenly gone sane and didn’t need to whimper over Darling anymore.
12
The three-legged beast carried the head to the heart of the Great Forest, to the altar at the center of a ring of standing stones that had been in place for several thousand years. It could barely squeeze through the picket of ancient oaks surrounding that greatest of the holy places of the pitifully diminished forest savages.
The monster deposited the head and hobbled back into the dappled woods.
* * *
One by one the beast hunted down the shamans of the woodland tribes and compelled them to go to the head. In their terror those petty old witch doctors threw themselves upon their faces before it and worshiped it as a god. They swore oaths of fealty for fear of the jaws of the beast. Then they began tending to the head’s needs.
Not once, to any, did it occur to take advantage of its powerlessness to destroy it. The fear of it was impressed too deeply into their kind. They could not imagine resistance.
And, always, there was that slavering monster to overawe them.
They went away from the holy place to collect willow withes, mystical herbs, rope grasses, leather both raw and tanned, blessed feathers, and stones known to possess magical properties. They gathered small animals appropriate for sacrifices, and even brought in a thief who was to be killed anyway. The man screamed and begged to be dispatched in the usual way, fearing the perpetual bondage and torment of a soul dedicated to a god.
Most of the stuff collected was junk. Most of the shamans’ magic was mummery, but it proceeded from a deeper truth, from a fountain of genuine power. Power that was real enough to serve the head’s immediate purpose.
In that oldest and most sacred of their holy places the shamans wove and built themselves a wicker man of willow and rope grasses and rawhide. They burned their herbs and slaughtered their sacrifices, christening and anointing the wicker man with blood. Their chanting invocations possessed the ring of stone for days.
Much of the chant was nonsense, but forgotten or only partly understood words of power lingered in its rhythms. Words enough to do.
When those old men finished the rite, they set the head on the wicker man’s neck. Its eyes blinked three times.
One wooden hand snatched a staff from a shaman. The old man fell. Tottering, the amalgam moved to a patch of bare earth. With the foot of the staff it scratched out crude block letters.
Slowly the thing gave the old men their orders. They hurried off. In a week they were ready to make improvements on their handiwork.
The rites this time were more bloody and bizarre. They included the sacrifice of two men snatched from the ruined town beside the Barrowland. Those two were a long time dying.
When the rites were finished the wicker man and its corrupt burden possessed more freedom of movement, though no one would mistake the construct for a human body. The head could now speak in a soft, gravelly whisper.
It ordered, “Collect your fifty best warriors.”
The old men balked. They had done their part. They had no taste for adventures.
The thing they had created whispered a chant in which there were no waste words. Three old men died screaming, devoured by worms that ate them from within.
“Gather your fifty best warriors.”
The survivors did as they were told.
When the warriors came they hoisted the wicker man onto the back of the crippled monster. No woodland pony or ox would allow the amalgam to mount it. He then led the band down to the wreck of the town at the Barrowland. “Kill them all,” he whispered.
As the massacre began the wicker man moved past, his ruined face fixed southward. His eyes smoldered with a poisonous, insane hatred.
13
Timmy came flying into camp moments after the racket started. He was so scared he could hardly talk. “We got to get out of here,” he choked out, in one-word gasps. “That monster is back. Something is riding it. Some savages are killing them in the village.”
Old Man Fish nodded once and dumped water on the fire. “Before it remembers us. Just like we rehearsed it.”
“Oh, come on,” Tully snarled. “Timmy’s probably seeing things.…”
The tree cut loose with the granddaddy of all blue bolts. It filled the forest with its glow and banged like heavenly lightning.
“Holy shit,” Tully whispered. He took off like a stampeded bear.
The others were not too far behind.
Smeds was thoughtful as he trotted along, his arms filled with gear. Fish’s precautions had paid off. Maybe. Like the old boy said, they weren’t out nothing getting away for a while.
From behind came a flare in a rosy peach shade answered by another blast of blue. Something yowled like the lost soul of a great cat.
Tully claimed Fish thought too much. But here was Fish turning out to do more and more of the leading while Tully eased into Smeds’s old place as shirker and complainer. Timmy wasn’t changing, though. He was still the handy runt with the thousand stories.
Fish and Timmy were putting more into this than Tully. Smeds didn’t think he could cut them. Especially not if the payoff was as big as Tully expected. No need to be bloody greedy then.
Smeds squatted beside his log, placed his stuff in the nest of branches left to hold it. Tully was on the river already, splashing away. “Sshh!” Fish said. Everybody froze, except Tully out there, splashing away.
Old Man Fish listened.
All Smeds heard was a lot of silence. Nor was there any lightning anymore.
Fish relaxed. “Nothing moving. We got time to strip.”
Smeds took the old man’s word but he didn’t waste any time getting naked and shoving off.
Lying on his chest on a log in the middle of a river in the middle of
the night, Smeds felt the first nibbles of panic. He could not see the island for which they were headed, though Fish said there was no way they could miss it from where they had left the bank. The current would carry them right to it.
That was no reassurance. He could not swim. If he missed the island he would drift maybe all the way to the sea.
A sudden barrage of blue flares illuminated the river. He was surprised to see that Fish and Timmy were nearby. And for all his furious splashing Tully was only a hundred feet ahead.
He felt an urge to say something, anything, just to draw courage from the act of communication. But he had nothing to say. And silence was imperative. No point asking for trouble.
During the coming hour he relived every moment of fear he’d ever known, every instance of misfortune and disaster. He was very ragged when he spied the darker loom of the island dead ahead.
It wasn’t much of an island. It was maybe thirty feet wide and two hundred yards long, a nail paring of a mudbank that had accumulated weeds and scrub brush. None of the brush was taller than a man. Smeds thought it a pretty pathetic hideout.
At the moment it looked like paradise.
A minute later Fish whispered, “It’s shallow enough to touch bottom. Walk your way around to the far side so there won’t be tracks coming out over here.”
Smeds slid off his log, discovered the water was no deeper than his waist. He followed Fish and Timmy, his toes squishing in the bottom muck, his calves tangling in water plants. Timmy yipped as he stepped on something that wriggled.
Smeds glanced back. Nothing. There had been no fireworks since the exchange that had shown him his companions on the river. The forest had begun to recall its night murmur.
“What took you guys so long?” Tully asked, with a touch of strain.
Smeds snapped, “We took time to pick up some stuff so we wouldn’t starve to death out here. What’re you going to munch, fireball?”
Smeds wondered if an occasional dose of stress wasn’t good for the state of a guy’s common sense. He’d dug up some useful memories during his helpless voyage.
Tully had run off on him before. When they were little, as a simple act of cruelty, and later, abandoning him to the mercies of bullies or leaving him to be beaten by a merchant when he, unwitting, had distracted the man while Tully had snatched a handful of coppers and run.
Tully bore watching.
Smeds could see the shadow of the future. Get Old Man Fish and Timmy Locan to kype the spike. Get dumb old Smeds to croak them when they do. Then take the loot and walk. Who is Smeds going to complain to when he has the blood of two men on his hands?
That would be just like Tully. Just like him.
* * *
They stayed on the island four days, feeding the gnats, broiling in the sun, waiting. It went hardest for Tully. He mooched food enough to get by, but he could not borrow dry clothing or a blanket to keep the sun off.
Smeds had a feeling Fish drew the wait out mainly for Tully’s benefit.
Fish went over to the mainland the fourth afternoon. Walking. The channel between the island and bank was never more than chest-deep. He carried his necessaries atop his head.
He did not return till after dark.
“Well?” Tully demanded, the only one of them with any store of impatience left.
“They’re gone. Before they left they found our camp and savaged it. They poisoned everything and left dozens of traps. We won’t go back there. Maybe we can find what we need in the village. Those folks won’t be needing anything anymore.”
* * *
Smeds learned the truth of Fish’s report next day, after a pass near their old camp to show Tully he was wasting his time whining for his stuff. The massacre had been complete, and had not spared the dogs, the fowl, the livestock. It was a warm morning and the air was still. The wings of a million flies filled the forest with an oppressive drone. Carrion eaters squawked and barked and chittered, arguing, as though there was not a feast great enough for ten times their number.
The stench was gut-wrenching even from a quarter mile away.
Smeds stopped. “I got no business to take care of over there. I’m going to go eyeball the tree.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Timmy said.
Tully looked at Smeds with a snarl. Old Man Fish shrugged, said, “We’ll meet you there.” The stink and horror didn’t seem to bother him.
14
The wicker man strode through the streets of the shattered city like an avenging god, stepping stiffly over the legions of the dead. The survivors of his forest warriors followed, awed by the vastness of the city and aghast at what sorcery had wrought. Behind them came a few hundred stunned imperial soldiers from the Oar garrison. They had recognized the invader and had responded to his call to arms—mainly because to defy him was to join those whose blood painted the cobblestones and whose spilled entrails clogged the gutters.
Fires burned in a thousand places. The people of Oar sent a great lament up into the darkness. But not near the dread thing stamping the night.
Furtive things moved in the shadows, rushing away from their places of hiding. Their fear was so great they could not remain still while the old terror passed. He ignored them. The backbone of resistance had been broken.
He ignored everything but the fires. Fire he avoided.
Bowstrings yelped. Arrows zipped into the wicker man as if into an archery butt. Chunks of willow and bits of stone flew. The wicker man reeled. But for the woodland warriors he would have toppled. Breathy rage tore through the head’s tortured lips.
Then words came, soft and bitter, chilling the hearts of those near enough to hear. More arrows ripped the fabric of the night, battered the wicker man, clipped one of his ears, felled one of the savages supporting him. He finished speaking.
Screams tore the shadows fifty yards away. They were terrible screams. They brought moisture to the eyes of the soldiers who followed the wicker man.
Those soldiers stepped over the knotted, twitching, whining forms of men wearing uniforms exactly like their own, brothers in arms whose courage had been sufficient to buoy their loyalty. Some shuddered and averted their eyes. Some took mercy and ended the torment with quick spear thrusts. Some recognized old comrades among the fallen and quietly swore to even accounts when sweet opportunity presented itself.
The wicker man proved as unstoppable as a natural disaster. He passed through Oar, trailing death and destruction and accumulating followers, and came to the city’s South Gate, where Loo and his sidekick vanished in a flurry of heels. The wicker man extended a hand, whispered secret words. The gate blasted to flinders and toothpicks. The wicker man stamped through and halted, staring down the darkened road.
The trail had grown confused. That of the prey was overlaid by other scents equally familiar, tantalizing, and hated. “As well,” he whispered. “As well. Take them all and have done.” He sniffed. “Him! And that accursed White Rose. And the one who thwarted me in Opal. And the wizard who set us free.” Ruined lips quivered in momentary fear. Yes. Even he knew the meaning of fear. “Her!”
The beast called Toadkiller Dog believed that she had lost her powers. He wanted to believe that himself. That would be a justice beautiful beyond compare. He needed to believe it. But he dared not, not entirely, till he saw for himself. Toadkiller Dog operated from motives not his own. And she was as crafty and treacherous a being as ever any human had been.
Moreover, he had tried to disarm her himself, once, and his failure had reduced him to this.
Toadkiller Dog bulled through the gateway, shouldering soldiers aside. Gore dripped off him. For hours he had ravened through the city, feeding an ancient thirst for blood. He moved on four limbs now, though one was as artificial as the wicker man’s body. He, too, peered down the road.
The forest warriors collapsed, falling asleep where they were. The wicker man was driven. He showed no inclination to baby his followers.
A tottering shaman, on his
last legs, tried to speak to the wicker man, tried to make him understand that unalloyed flesh could not keep the pace he had set.
The head turned slightly. The expression that shown through the ruin was one of contempt. “Keep up or die,” it whispered. It beckoned men to come lift it onto the back of the beast. It rode out, insane with a hunger for revenge.
15
The folks we was chasing never did much to cover up which way they was headed. I don’t guess they thought they had any reason. Anyway, Raven knew where the guy he was chasing was headed. Some place called Khatovar, all the way down on the southern edge of the world.
I knew the guy, Croaker. Him and his Black Company boys did a job on me at the Barrowland, though they never did me too bad. I got out alive. So I had mixed feelings about them. They were a hard bunch. I didn’t feel like I really wanted to catch them.
The more we rode along, the more Raven dried out and turned back into the real Raven. And I don’t mean into the Corbie that I got to know when I first met him, I mean the real bad-ass so tough and hard he was death on a stick. I don’t think it ever occurred to him to take a drink after he made up his mind that he had something else to do.
We had practice sessions every morning before we rode out and every evening after we set camp. Even when he was at his weakest it was all I could do to handle him. When he really started coming back he beat me at everything but throwing rocks and running footraces.
His hip never let up on him.
He wouldn’t never stop over at an inn or in a village. Putting away temptation, I guess.
You ain’t never going to impress me with nothing if you think you’re going to tell me tall tales and you ain’t never seen the Tower at Charm. There ain’t nothing ought to be that big. It’s got to be five hundred feet tall and as black as a buzzard’s heart. I never seen nothing like it before and I don’t expect I ever will again.
We never went too close. Raven said there wasn’t no sense getting those people’s attention. Damned straight. That was the heart of the empire, the home of the Lady and all those old evils called the Ten Who Were Taken.